Barbarians Remix: The Year of the Boxers with historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom

Jeremiah and David are joined by Jeffrey Wasserstrom, historian of modern China and a longtime interpreter of the country’s shifting place in the world. Originally recorded in 2020, this conversation revisits the Boxer War of 1900—not through the usual lens of siege and rescue, but by examining what followed: the punitive occupation, the fractured international memory, and the long shadow cast by a global media frenzy. Wasserstrom’s reading reframes the Boxers not as an isolated burst of anti-foreign violence, but as part of a cycle of uprisings and reprisals that shaped modern China’s encounter with the West. He discusses why the term “Boxer Rebellion” obscures more than it reveals, and why “Year of the Boxers” may be a better way to understand the crisis—and its aftershocks. The episode also explores deeper patterns in Chinese history, including the 60-year cyclical mindset that links 1900 to 1960 and, by some accounts, to 2020. It’s a conversation about repetition, media distortion, and the uneasy symmetry between violence and remembrance.

You can listen to Barbarians Remix: The Year of the Boxers with historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Barbarians Remix: The Year of the Boxers with historian Jeffrey Wasserstrom is an episode from Barbarians at the Gate by Barbarians at the Gate.

This episode is 0:22:30 long.

This episode was published on Jul 29, 2025.

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